Resolutions for Your Home in 2017

Keep organized – A great tip to keeping your home organized according to Marie Kondo, is to to have just one spot in the home for each item. For example, keep one place for books, and one place for linens, and one place for pens and paper. This year, try to maintain simple home organization by applying this easy to implement rule.

Use less toxic cleaners – Frankly, both the environment and our bodies don’t need more exposure to toxins. A practical and easy way to cut the number of toxins in our home is to reduce the amount of chemical cleaners we use. Try making your own cleaners using natural, everyday items like lemon and vinegar. Here is an easy how-to for an all purpose cleaner.

Avoid adding more clutter – We could all benefit from some more simplicity in our busy lives. One way to go about this, is by creating more order in our homes. This year, along with keeping a more organized home, try to reduce accumulation. For example, do a deep seasonal clean where you purge the items you are not using, or whenever you bring something new into the home, give away an item or two, that you already own.

Be better about waste sorting – If you are already an excellent sorter of garbage, than kudos to you. However, many of us could probably improve our waste sorting. Are you recycling the right items? Are you recycling everything that can be recycled? What about compost? Are you even composting or are you just tossing those fruit and vegetable peels in the garbage? If we all try harder at waste storage, we can reduce the amount of garbage we produce and what a great resolution that is for 2017!

Reduce energy usage – Here’s another way to do better for the environment – using less energy in our homes. We can do this by setting our thermostats appropriately for the different times of day (for example, we dont need to run the heat or AC so high when we’re not home or during the night). Other ways to reduce energy consumption at home is by turning off the lights when they’re not in use and by switching to energy efficient appliances.